


Waverly Earp's Guide on How To Survive College

by kbana14



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Earp Curse (Wynonna Earp), F/F, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:22:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29254392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbana14/pseuds/kbana14
Summary: It's totally foolproof(...mostly)
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 11
Kudos: 67





	1. Rule #1: Always Double Check Your Application

Waverly Earp pouts as they drive along the New England highway so early on a Sunday morning. She hasn’t done much speaking to Wynonna since she’d gotten her letter.

She’d seen red that day; she’s still angry and not sure she’ll ever totally get over it. 

It was Dartmouth or bust for her. As the valedictorian cheer captain with a resume chocked full of extracurriculars and a file overflowing with recommendations, she knew that she was a shoo-in for acceptance at the Ivy League institution. (And she figured it wouldn’t hurt that her personal essay was essentially a sob story about how she persevered through an alcoholic father and a mother who split immediately after she was born). It was Dartmouth or bust to the point that that was the only application she had filled out.

A cosmic mistake, she knows.

The funny thing about when you make a cosmic mistake is that, well, the universe is the one to punish you. It’s a series of increasingly unfortunate events which starts with her spilling almond milk all over her laptop and ends with Wynonna being the one to physically take her application to the post office to mail the darn thing in.

She all but stalked the mailman as she waited to hear back from Dartmouth, so much so that the poor guy sheepishly handed her the large envelope and then bolted straight back to his van when it finally came. She skipped inside, giddy, the weight of the envelope telling her it was most likely an acceptance packet instead of a rejection letter. Waverly was so excited, in fact, that she failed to even look at the front of the envelope until she got inside and tore it open at the table.

At first she was certain it was a joke. She narrowed her eyes at the letterhead—navy-blue and gold, very much _not_ the trademark Dartmouth Green. Flipping the envelope back over in her hands, she saw the mailing address of the school and seethed.

“Wynonna!” She yelled, the sound of her voice echoing off the walls. When her sister didn’t answer, she took a deep breath and, “WYNONNA EARP I SWEAR TO G—”

“Now, what are you hollerin’ about, Waverly? You’ll wake the dead,” Gus scolded her, poking her head out of the kitchen.

Waverly pouted as she tossed the packet on the table, slouching back in the seat and crossing her arms over her chest like a child who hadn’t gotten their way. Wynonna sauntered down the stairs unfazed, very much used to having someone angrily shouting her name.

“Wynonna, I’m gonna kill you,” Waverly snarls angrily at her sister who kind of just shrugs it off and doesn’t care to ask why.

“What the hell are you on about?” Gus stepped fully into the dining room, still holding one of the dishes she was drying, looking ready to prevent an attempted homicide.

“Why doesn’t Wynonna explain?” Waverly nudged the envelope across the table toward her sister, who picked it up and started to read the contents.

“No way dude, it came—you got in! Congrats babygirl,” her sister congratulated, going in for a hi-five.

“Notice anything odd about the acceptance letter?” Waverly sat, arms still crossed, ignoring the hand extended toward her face.

“No,” Wynonna frowned, scanning the paper, beginning to read aloud, “ _Dear Waverly, Congratulations! I am pleased to offer you admittance to Massachusetts State College at Dartmouth Class of 2021! Your inspirational application and your impressive resume are more than—”_

“—Wynonna!” Waverly groaned. “That’s not the right college!”

“Are you sure?”

“God, Wynonna, I said _Dartmouth College_. I asked you to mail it to _Dartmouth College_ , the Ivy League school.”

“No,” Wynonna said, letting Gus take the letter from her hand. “You said, _‘mail this to Dartmouth’_ when you gave it to me. So I did.”

“So, what’d you do, Google ‘ _Colleges in Dartmouth’_ and sent it to the first address that popped up?”

Wynonna averted her gaze, looking at one of the birds flying outside the McCready family home. Waverly released a long, loud groan as she planted her forehead into the table exasperatedly.

“You know,” Wynonna said through a chuckle, “if you were really Ivy League smart, you wouldn’t have trusted me to take care of something so obviously important to you.”

“ _Wynonna,”_ Gus slapped Wynonna upside her head as Waverly scowled at her. Somewhere deep down though, she knew Wynonna was right. Not that she’d ever admit it.

“Well, maybe you can still apply,” her sister suggested.

“No. I can’t,” Waverly pouted. “I can’t apply there or anywhere else for the fall semester—it’s way past the deadline.”

“Defer then,” her sister proposed. “Start in the spring.”

“I can’t just _start in the spring._ Ugh, my life is over!” She may have been _mildly_ dramatic. (Whatever).

“Waverly Earp, you knock it off,” Gus swatted at her with the dish towel, “now it says here that they’re offering you a $30,000 scholarship—that’s pretty much all of it. I think you should give it a try, just for the semester, and if you absolutely hate it, you can transfer.”

And that was how she ended up (unhappily) road tripping across the continent over to Dartmouth—the town on the south coast of Massachusetts and not the college in New Hampshire. Her and Wynonna were hardly on speaking terms on account that Waverly was still furious, which made the drive confined in her sister’s old bucket of rust that much more unbearable. She’d had her headphones in since they crossed the border into Minnesota, and had brought a stack of books to allow her to ignore her sister for pretty much the whole way. 

As the truck drove along into the town of Dartmouth, Waverly resigned herself to the fact that she’d only be here for one semester. Twelve weeks. She’d be home by Christmas and getting ready to transfer to the _real_ Dartmouth for January. When they pull off the main road and onto College Boulevard, Waverly notes that at least the scenery is nice and the trees that line the road will look pretty when the waning summer turns to fall. She’d heard stories and seen pictures of New England in the fall—it was part of what sold her on Dartmouth in the first place.

The scenery is immediately cut by the monstrosity that is the campus itself. The first thing she notices is that the campus looks small, like everything is incredibly close to each other. Enrollment data on the website tells her there’s only about 5,000 undergraduate students and about half of them are commuters anyway, so it makes sense. The next thing she notes as Wynonna drives them around the loop, which they’ve so _cleverly_ named “Ring Road”, is that it appears to be the only real road on campus. So, yes, she’s correct: the campus is _tiny._ The last thing, she snickers as “Go Your Own Way” flicks over to “Big Yellow Taxi” on her playlist, is just how _ugly_ it looks. She’d seen some photos online, but really seeing it in person was a whole different level. Every single building was made of the same dingy concrete and they were all rigidly shaped. Waverly knew that brutalist architecture was a thing, but really was there a need to make a college look like it was a prison? (Perhaps it was a metaphor for the American education system).

Wynonna nods to a man who directs her down a side lane that brings them to the freshman housing section. Her sister puts the truck in park in another roundabout when they reach a set of two buildings—Pitt and Evans Halls, the freshman housing hubs—and rips the earbuds from Waverly’s head.

“We’re here,” Wynonna says as she hops out of the truck, Waverly groaning as she follows suit.

Dartmouth, even on September 3rd at 7:27 am, is _hot_ —by New England standards at least, but the humidity makes it unbearable. The sun is annoyingly bright, but what's really getting her is that the move-in crew is especially obnoxious, playing peppy, cheesy, college orientation leader music first thing in the morning. Waverly squints even as she pulls her sunglasses over her eyes and slinks around to the bed of the truck with her arms crossed.

“You can’t ignore me forever,” Wynonna says pointedly as Waverly avoids looking at her. She turns up her nose as if to say she’s going to try for as long as possible. “Look, I know it’s not what you wanted, but you still are like two whole thousand miles away from home.”

She makes a show of ignoring Wynonna, pulling down one of her Rubbermaid bins filled with clothes from the back of the truck. There’s a lot of kids here, wearing bright yellow shirts with the word STAFF across the back, and from the few new students she’s actually seen move in, she figures that the staff is here to expedite things as more people start to arrive. One of the move-in volunteers comes over to the pair with a large bin with wheels on it and smirks at Waverly—he’s a big muscly, meathead-looking guy, but she doesn’t _hate_ the attention. There’s a nametag attached to his shirt, but it’s torn in half so she can only see the letters “CHA”. She assumes his name is Charles, and calls him that in her head when she doesn’t get a proper introduction.

“Have you checked in yet?” Charles asks as Wynonna hands him another container to put into the bin.

“No,” she shakes her head.

“Well, I can take you over where you need to in like two seconds, and then I can help you bring your stuff to your room if you’d like,” he says, and Waverly can tell he’s definitely trying to flirt in a weird boy kind of way, because she can see the table from where she’s standing, and it doesn’t seem all that complicated. She nods anyway. If she’s gonna suffer through this semester, she’ll at least let the big strong boy do all the heavy lifting for her on move-in day.

The boy sends a winning smile her way and hops out of the bed of Wynonna’s truck. There’s another volunteer that instructs her where to park her vehicle so that more people can pull up, and Wynonna leaves Waverly with Charles to do so.

Once the bin is full and she’s gotten her room key from the check-in table, Charles leads her into the building, flexing his muscles as he pushes the bin toward the elevator. There’s a decently sized line for the one elevator that serves the entire four-story building (one that’s supposed to serve half of the resident freshmen. Doing the math in her head quickly there’s about 625 students who need to use the elevator). Charles sees the length of the line, while Waverly sees the idea form in his head, though it looks like the action is physically painful for him.

“Hey, you’re on the second floor,” he says, looking at the slip of paper with her room assignment on it, “Why don’t I just carry your stuff upstairs? It’ll probably be quicker than waiting for this elevator.”

Waverly agrees, though she knows it’s a vain attempt to show off to her. She grabs her desk lamp and her backpack and follows the boy, who’s carrying both of her Rubbermaid bins, up the stairs. She won’t lie, the boy _is_ attractive, and the way his muscles look in that yellow t-shirt that fits maybe a little too well is a surprisingly welcome sight after spending the whole drive here pissed off and brooding. 

“Here, let me get that for you, these things are tricky,” Charles wipes his brow and smiles at her again, taking her key to unlock the door for her. He twists the key in the lock and tries to push the door open, chuckling nervously when the handle twists but the door doesn’t budge. He tries again with no change in the result. “See what I mean?”

Waverly nudges him out of the way, turns the key and holds it in the unlock position as she pushes on the door and, behold, the door opens.

“I was just testing to see if you could figure it out, obviously,” Charles shrugs, defending himself. “I’ll uh, go get the rest of your stuff.”

(The boy all but trips over himself as he jogs toward the door back downstairs. She rolls her eyes, finding it oddly charming).

Waverly texts Wynonna her room number to avoid an annoyed phone call from the woman and then pushes the stack of Rubbermaid bins against the door to force it the rest of the way open, finding it odd that the curtains were drawn in her room. She flips the light switch up and was met with an alarming surprise.

“Huh? What the hell?” A girl’s voice is husky with sleep and full of confusion.

Waverly jumps backward as she hears the voice, not expecting anyone else to be here. She figured she’d be one of the first ones to have moved in since her 7:30 move-in slot was the earliest time that day. This girl looked like she’d been here a while, considering that she’d very clearly woken up from a deep sleep and all of her belongings were put away.

“Oh, my god, I’m sorry!” She apologizes, looking over her room assignment. _Pitt 224B_. She double checks the placard on the wall outside the door and sure enough, it says _224B._ For a second the worry creeps in that she’s in the wrong building. (It’s an irrational fear because her key wouldn’t work for any other room than the one she’s assigned to). “I might have the wrong room.”

“You’re Waverly, right?” The girl asks, sitting fully up in bed.

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re in the right place, I’m Chrissy. Nice to finally meet you.”

She’d gone random on her roommate, obviously. It’s not like she knew anyone around here or anyone back home who was also going to a small state school that no one’s ever heard of. She’d filled out the questionnaire and she and Chrissy were like an 84% match, and she guessed that’s the best she was going to get. They’d spoken only a few times over messenger, but hadn’t gone in depth. She didn’t even know the girl’s last name.

“Nice to meet you too,” she rubs at her arm nervously, “sorry I woke you up so early. I didn’t think you’d be here already.”

“Oh, I moved in like two weeks ago,” Chrissy informs her and Waverly’s struck again with confusion. The brunette in bed notices and laughs a bit. “I’m on the field hockey team. We moved in mid-August for preseason.”

Waverly nods, but doesn’t get to say anything else as Charles walks into the room with her duffel bag slug over his shoulder and her floor-length mirror precariously perched on top of another box of school supplies and other miscellany. She gets out of his way, seeing the disaster waiting to happen with that boy and her mirror. Once everything has safely made it into her room, Charles stands, leaning against the doorway, smirking again.

“Thank you,” she says to him. “We really could’ve just waited for the elevator.”

“Oh, please, a girl as pretty as you shouldn’t have to wait.”

Waverly blushes and rocks up onto her tiptoes and then back onto her heels.

“So, uh,” Charles digs for his phone in the pocket of his basketball shorts, “maybe I can see you around—”

“—Hardy! Let’s get a move on, don’t make the freshman parents wait, they’ll kill you.”

Charles is interrupted by another guy in a yellow shirt. The boy looks back to Waverly, about to hand her his phone, presumably to ask for her number.

“Seriously, I hope we can see each other a—”

“—Dude, _let’s go.”_

The other guy physically dragged Charles away and Waverly can’t help but laugh. All things considered (mainly that Charles was most definitely a regular college _dude bro_ ), she thinks she wouldn’t mind seeing him again around campus.

When she turns around, Chrissy’s wiggling her eyebrows at her suggestively.

“He’s cute,” she says.

“He’s okay,” is what Waverly chooses to respond with, even if internally she does agree with her roommate.

“Oh please, girl, you’ve already got him wrapped around your little finger—I don’t know any guy who’d carry all your stuff upstairs _just because_.”

“Maybe he’s being nice.”

“Oh sweetie, it’s cute that you think that,” Chrissy smiles at her. “Dude was tryna get them digits.”

“And if he asked, I’d’ve thought about giving them to him.”

“You’d give _what_ to _whom?”_ Wynonna bursts into the room with a nosy question. It’s quintessential Wynonna, truly. Waverly crosses her arms and turns to sit on her currently empty bed. “Seriously, you’re still doing this? You do realize I’m going back two thousand miles and two whole time zones, right. You’re gonna miss me and this is your last chance to talk to me.”

Waverly holds her ground, still very adamant about her grudge against Wynonna. Chrissy has other plans.

“That cute boy was _totally_ gonna ask for her number until his buddy dragged him back to work.”

“Not that douche nozzle who brought your shit up,” Wynonna scrunches up her nose and admonishes her sister.

“Shut up ‘Nonna,” Waverly pouts.

“She speaks!”

“Whatever,” she grumbles, giving in. Waverly supposes that once Wynonna’s back in Canada and she’s in the swing of classes, they’ll have limited time to talk. “He’s cute and he seems nice.”

“With the number of times I’ve said that I’m surprised I haven’t wound up pregnant.”

Chrissy laughs from her side of the room and Waverly can tell her sister likes the new roommate a ton. Maybe it’s just because Chrissy laughs at her jokes.

“Whatever, I’m proud of you,” Wynonna praises. “Branch out. Spread your wings—just…not your legs…unless _you_ bring the protection.”

“Can you make a poster of that so I can have it on my wall?” Chrissy asks, swinging her legs out from under the covers. Wynonna nods, agreeing to the art project.

Waverly busies herself with unpacking some of her stuff, throwing her sheets onto the mattress cover she bought so she can make her bed before organizing her clothes. Chrissy saunters over to the closet on her side of the room to grab a pair of sneakers once she’s changed out of her pajamas. (Waverly would’ve never been so bold as to change in front of two virtual strangers, but gave Chrissy props anyway. It’s something Wynonna would do, so it doesn’t really phase her). Wynonna stands in the doorway, making comments about the people she sees in the hallway—almost all of them sarcastic, most of them hilarious.

“Wynonna, are you gonna stand there and make fun of people the whole time or are you gonna help me?”

“Babygirl that is not my job.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Guilty,” her sister shrugs, plopping herself down on Waverly’s still unmade bed.

“Hey, I gotta go, but we’ll definitely catch up later, okay?” Chrissy says, resting her sunglasses on top of her head.

“Where are you going?” She asks, taking in the yellow shirt her roommate is donning.

“I gotta help with move-in. Athletes are allowed to move in early for preseason for free as long as we help move the other students in when they get here. My shift starts in…” she looks at her watch, “…oh shit! Ten minutes ago, gotta go, bye.”

“I like her,” Wynonna says after Chrissy sprints out of the room.

“You would,” she responds bluntly, “but yeah, she seems cool.”

There’s a silence that falls over them, and Waverly uses it to get most of her room organized. She puts the little adorable succulents she found in the shop they stopped at somewhere outside of Akron out on her desk, neatly and meticulously set around her notebooks and desk lamp. (Just because this isn’t the ideal situation doesn’t mean that she won’t make the most of it with an organized and stylish desk). Her clothes are folded and sorted into each of her drawers and the items she needs to hang are arranged by color in the closet. All that’s left to do is hang her fairy lights and make her bed. Wynonna breaks the silence when she realizes Waverly is waiting for her to get up so she can put the comforter on.

“So uh, I know I’ve apologized like a million times,” her sister scratches at the back of her neck, “and I know you’re pissed you’re here and not at the _real_ Dartmouth, but I want you to have fun and have a good experience. I love you and want you to be happy.”

“I am pissed,” Waverly says and releases a sigh, “but, it’s whatever. It’s one semester and then I’ll be out of here and _maybe_ we can move on and forget about it.”

“Yeah, it can be something we laugh about some day,” Wynonna agrees. “But, you know, maybe give this place a chance. Maybe there’s a reason I fucked up so spectacularly.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Wynonna,” she rolls her eyes playfully.

Waverly finishes making her bed, and uses the little corkboard strip across the top of the wall to pin her string of lights up, turning them on to create the perfect ambiance. She can’t hide how much she can’t wait to have this sort of set up in the dorms in New Hampshire—she imagines sitting on her bed under the fairy lights, sipping some tea while doing homework and watching the snow fall on the pines that surround the entire Dartmouth campus. Instead, when she looks out the window all she sees is the rundown basketball court in the freshman quad and the ugly concrete block that is Evans Hall.

When everything’s said and done, Wynonna knows it’s time to get back on the road home. It’s a 39-hour drive without stops and she’s only got ‘til Tuesday off of work.

“I guess this is it, babygirl,” she says, voice firm but Waverly can see the tears swimming in her eyes.

“I guess so,” Waverly says and now it really hits her that this is the first bit of freedom she’ll ever have. “I’m gonna miss you Wynonna, don’t worry.”

“Even if you’re mad at me?”

“Yes, but you know I’m not _really_ mad at you, I guess. Just pissed about being here and not there.”

“You’ll make it work, you always do,” Wynonna hugs her tightly. “Just know, that I am so incredibly proud of you, no matter what college you go to or whatever you do with your life. You are incredible and don’t let anyone, especially DoucheNozzle McFratBoy, convince you otherwise.”

“I won’t,” Waverly smiles, though the corners of her own vision are blurred with tears. “Take care of Gus.”

“We both know she takes care of me.”

“Then take care of her by not actively trying to give her a heart attack.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

They hug tightly once more, both of them openly crying now. Wynonna allows herself a moment longer then pulls away, wipes away her tears with two fingers on her right hand and uses those same fingers to salute her sister and walk out of the room.

Alone in the room, alone for the first time in her life really, she throws herself on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. It’s one of those popcorn ceilings from the 70s, and that thought alone makes Waverly shudder. She’s able now, room empty, to notice details she hadn’t when Chrissy and Wynonna and even Charles were here. The walls in the cinderblock room are a drab grey and the floor is a similar drab, slightly darker grey linoleum. The room itself is bigger than she expected, especially from stock photos of college dorms she’s seen; all of hers and Chrissy’s stuff fits comfortably and there’s a decent amount of space in the center of the room (big enough for a good-sized area rug to cover the ugly floor—she should definitely talk to Chrissy about going in together on one, for the aesthetic). Other than that, it’s a standard college dorm; she and Chrissy have their own extra-long twin-sized beds pressed up against opposite walls of the room (Waverly’s on the left side and Chrissy’s taken the right); there’s two desks, two closets, and four sets of drawers with three drawers in each, and as long as the drawers stay under their beds, Waverly figures that this dorm might not be as bad as other’s she’s heard of (especially when she knows that a lot of schools’ dorm rooms are approximately the size of a shoebox).

Waverly takes time to make a list in her head.

_Pros: Chrissy seems cool, the dorm isn’t optimal but still better than anticipated, that Charles kid is cute and might like her, and (probably most importantly) she’s one day closer to getting out of here and where she actually belongs._

_Cons: she’s at the wrong college, this one is ugly, what if that Charles kid is a douche, she doesn’t belong here, this place isn’t Dartmouth…_

(Later on that night, after the floor meeting with the obnoxious RAs and the gross dudes on the other half of the floor, she adds both of those as cons. After she catches up with Chrissy, she drops the “seems” from her pro, because Chrissy actually _is_ pretty cool. And finally, when she spends two and a half hours tossing and turning, she adds: “Dorms are hotter than hell itself” to the cons).

So really, she’s not sure what to make of this place other than that she hopes the semester flies by so she can transfer.


	2. Rule #2: Make Some Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story starts off in the fall of 2017 mostly (completely) because I'm a depressed Boston sports fan still trying to hang onto the glory days :)
> 
> (Also, Champ Hardy, a homophobic asshole? More likely than you think).

The morning after she moves in, Waverly decides that in order to survive the semester, she’s going to just lay low—keep her head down, go to class, do her work. The less she complicates her life by adding a social component, the faster the semester will go by.

 _Simple enough_ , she thinks. _A walk in the park; piece of cake; easy peasy, lemon squeezy._

It lasts until noon. (And classes don’t even start up until Wednesday).

Waverly Earp considers herself a determined person. Case in point: her 39-hour silence on the way to college—ignoring _Wynonna Earp_ , the world’s most persistent irritant. However, that seemed to pale in comparison to the pestering of one Chrissy Nedley.

Chrissy had field hockey practice at 7 am, which Waverly gives her credit for—she’d always been an early riser to maximize her days, but to commit to something so physically taxing at such an ungodly hour, well her roommate was her god damn hero.

She takes advantage of having the room to herself, playing her music aloud on the Bluetooth speaker she loved so much, catching herself up on some light reading from her worn and weathered copy of _East of Eden._ Waverly can’t help but think to herself, in this early hour of what is just her first full day at college, that laying low will be a breeze. She’s got enough books to start a small library and she figures she’ll be plenty busy once classes kick into gear.

Which reminds her, she’s got to pick up her books for class from the bookstore when it opens.

When Chrissy strolls back into their dorm some time after 10, she announces she’s going to take a shower because apparently she “smells worse than the Grim Reaper’s asshole”. Waverly snorts at the comment as Chrissy steps out. It’s barely been 24 hours and she herself already dreads having to use the communal shower; if sharing the bathroom with the entire girls’ half of the floor is anything like sharing one with Wynonna, she’s in for a _long_ semester. (She thinks it best to figure out when the cleaning staff comes in and plan her shower schedule around that).

She turns off her speaker and switches to her headphones when Chrissy returns from the bathroom, still reading her book as she finishes the last of the mini blueberry muffins she bought from the vending machine downstairs. Another venture she has yet to make, though she knows she will have to at some point, is the trip to the resident dining hall, _The Marketplace_.

Waverly survives another forty minutes of reading before she can hear Chrissy groaning from across the room about how bored she is. Her roommate has been flipping through Netflix for a source of entertainment (unsuccessfully) for the better part of the last half hour, sighing dramatically from time to time. She found it pretty easy to ignore from across the room, but when Chrissy takes up residence on her bed and heaves a long heavy sigh, Waverly has no choice but to lower her book, remove one of her earbuds and look her roommate in the eye.

“What?” She asks.

“I’m bored.” That much Waverly has gathered, so she waits for Chrissy to add. “Let’s do something.”

“I’d rather not,” she says, hoping to return to her book.

“Why not?” Chrissy whines, nudging at her arm. “Come on, Waverly, let’s go out, make some friends.”

She scoffs to herself, thinking about how that was the literal opposite of her plan. When she doesn’t answer, Chrissy tries a different approach.

“Oh! I know, let’s go to Target—we can get that rug for the middle of the room,” Chrissy pointed to the empty area of floor, “or you know, walking around Target is a hobby in itself.”

If she was being honest, Waverly _could_ use a trip to Target, if only to pick up a pair of flip flops to wear in the shower, because one thing she did not need to add to this experience was athlete’s foot.

She doesn’t know Chrissy all that well, but she has a feeling she’s not getting out of this any time soon.

“Fine,” she sighs, giving into her roommate’s pestering and throws on a pair of flats. She makes sure to snag her key off the hook they’d put near the door—those things locked automatically, and she didn’t want to have to deal with the freshman cliché of getting herself locked out.

\---

They’re in and out of Target in what has to be record time, only getting distracted by unnecessary, albeit adorable, knickknacks twice. Waverly grabbed the cheapest, plainest pair of flip flops to use as shower shoes and they’ve boughten a simple maroon area rug that compliments both Waverly’s and Chrissy’s room décor. The more interesting part of their trip occurs when Waverly opens her mouth about a certain observation she’s made in the short span of time she’d been off campus.

Waverly wishes she was exaggerating when she says that she and Chrissy pass a total of four different Dunkin’ Donuts on the five-minute drive to Target. She’d always thought the jokes were blowing the number of “Dunks per square mile” (as her roommate put it when Waverly had pointed it out) out of proportion, but if anything, they’re sorely _under_ estimating it.

“Woah, woah, woah, you’re telling me you’ve _never_ been to Dunks?” Chrissy asks like it’s the most scandalous thing in the world.

“I think you know the answer to that is obvious.”

Chrissy all but causes an accident switching lanes to turn into the drive-thru of what she swears is the _only acceptable_ Dunkin’ in the area. The girl fist pumps to herself when she sees there’s no line.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” her roommate says as they pull up just before the speaker.

 _“Can I help you?”_ Comes the _very_ unpleasant-sounding voice of a woman who sounds like she’d literally rather be anywhere else.

“Yeah, can I get two medium iced caramel extra-extras?” Chrissy orders. “And two strawberry frosted with sprinkles.”

(She’s not quite sure what the whole “extra-extra” deal is, but she has a feeling it bears little resemblance to the almond milk lattes she gets from the shop back home).

 _“Anything else?”_ (Still unpleasant, Waverly notes).

“No, that’s it.”

_“Alright, pull up.”_

Chrissy does as she’s told and Waverly pulls out her wallet, ready to pay her half. Her roommate waves her hand and tells her to put it away, telling her it’s her treat.

“You need a tray?” An equally disinterested cashier at the window asks.

“No thanks, we’re good,” Chrissy tells her, and Waverly notes it’s the first time she’s heard someone drop an ‘r’. She’s not sure if the Boston accent is actually real, or how far it extends outside of the city, but the more she thinks of it, the more she hears it in the people she encounters.

The cashier collects the money from Chrissy, hands her the beverages, the paper bag and her change before the girl drives forward, not back onto the road, but into a parking spot. Waverly eyes her curiously, even more so when Chrissy slaps her hand away to prevent her from grabbing her coffee. Once the car is fully off and in park, her roommate opens the paper bag to produce two donuts with bright pink frosting and covered in rainbow sprinkles; she places the donuts on top of the lids of their cups so that the orange-pink straws poke through the holes. Only then Chrissy hands her the drink and Waverly looks at it curiously as Chrissy pulls out her phone.

“Smile!” Her roommate snaps a selfie of the two before she can even object. _“Roomie’s first trip to Dunks”_ with the Canadian flag emoji is the caption on the image that she adds to her Snapchat story. (Waverly not-so-begrudgingly admits that she kind of enjoys the photo).

Moment of celebrity past, Waverly removes the donut from the top of the cup and ventures a sip from the coffee, Chrissy watching along expectantly.

She all but chokes on how sweet it is. (She’s failed to consider that “extra-extra” means extra cream and extra sugar).

“Well?”

“It’s good…sweet,” she says with a hidden grimace, still feeling the sugar on her teeth. She’ll drink it so not as to waste Chrissy’s hospitality and her money, but she’ll definitely need to find a better alternative.

Satisfied, Chrissy pulls out of the parking lot, happily sipping on her own sugary beverage and heading back toward the school.

“Do you need to pick up your books too?” She asks Waverly as they’re pulling onto Ring Road. Waverly nods her response and Chrissy pulls her car into a lot that is very clearly _not_ marked for student parking. The girl seems totally nonplussed as she casually exits the vehicle and locks the door behind the pair.

“Um, are you sure you’re okay to park there?” Waverly asks, eying the _Permit Parking Only: VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED_ sign. “Won’t you get in trouble?”

Chrissy just laughs nonchalantly and keeps walking toward the bookstore.

“No, not really,” she shrugs simply. “Campus Police is in charge of parking enforcement and they all know better than to ticket that car.”

“Why?”

“My dad’s head of Campus Police. Has been for _years_. Those guys just _know_ to look the other way when they see that car. Little perks, I guess.”

Waverly keeps her comment of how unfair that sounds to herself. She figures that it may be a perk that comes in handy some day. (For how small this campus is in comparison to other schools, the walk from the freshman quad on the outside of the ring to the other buildings on campus seems like _miles_. With the ever-looming threat of snow or trademark shitty New England weather, Waverly chooses not to look this gift horse in the mouth).

The two walk into the campus center to locate the bookstore as Waverly catches sight of the only other face familiar to her on campus. Good timing too, she supposes, because Chrissy offers a hasty apology as she has to run off to some field hockey compliance meeting that she “ _Totally forgot about”._ Waverly rolls her eyes and realizes she’s going to have to teach that girl how to manage her time.

“Hey! Hey!” She hears before she sees the boy jogging over toward her. “Avery, right?”

“Actually, it’s Waverly,” she corrects, but she can’t actually remember if she gave him her name or not. To be fair, she doesn’t even actually know _his_ name. The boy nods. “I wanted to thank you again, for yesterday, you didn’t have to do all that.”

“Well, you know,” he smirks, subtly-but-not-subtly showing off his arm muscles to her. Waverly thinks he’s going to continue but very quickly realizes he’s finished his train of thought.

“Right,” she drags out, rethinking her temporary moment of attraction to the boy yesterday. He is cute, she’ll give him that, but clearly he has no brain and she doesn’t need that sort of energy in her life. Not while she’s trying to lay low and get out of here. “Sorry, I never actually got your name.”

She extends it as more of a courtesy than anything else.

“Name’s Hardy. Champ Hardy,” he says, like he thinks he’s James Bond or something. And really, now that she’s interacting with the boy outside of him doing a chivalrous (albeit out of vanity) thing, all she can think is: of _course_ his name is Champ.

She keeps walking into the bookstore, Champ on her heels as she does so.

“So, what’re you here for?” He asks.

“At the bookstore?” She points to the sign. “Gee, I was hoping that maybe I could get a nice sandwich—maybe a pizza.”

“Pfft, don’t be stupid, you can’t get food here,” he says, deadly serious. “You gotta go to Res for that.”

“What the heck is Res?” Last she knew, the dining hall was called _The Marketplace._

He laughs at her like she’s the idiot. (Like he hadn’t just seriously asked her what she was doing at the bookstore).

“You seriously don’t know?”

“Not really.” It’s not like she’s a freshman or anything.

“Wait, you don’t think that Res is called _Marketplace_ , do you?”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” he’s practically cackling by now and Waverly’s hoping to find a way to politely leave the conversation. She fully takes back even the slightest thought of liking this boy. “Only the _lames_ call it that.”

“Oh, right, okay,” she tucks it away as useful information for when she does eventually have to eat there. She doesn’t want to look like _a lame_ , she supposes.

Waverly approaches the back counter of the bookstore with her student ID in hand to give to the attendant, Champ Hardy still tailing her. One thing she has to give to this school is its efficiency in the bookstore—all she had to do was bring her ID and they’d bring her all her books, neatly-packaged and paid for by the vouchers that were a part of her scholarship package. No searching for books or having to order them separately when the store inevitably didn’t have enough copies. (No having to waste time browsing the aisles for her course texts, allowing Champ Hardy more time to say something stupider than she already assumes he is).

The attendant comes out with a stack of books that is surprisingly (thankfully) lighter than she expects and hands it to her with a smile. Waverly exits the bookstore after a mostly painless encounter before Champ is back at it again.

“I could carry that for ya if you’d like,” he offers, though she obviously can manage it. “I bet it’s wicked heavy.”

(She laughs to herself, hearing the first _wicked_ of many she assumes).

“No, that’s okay.”

“Do you maybe wanna go to Res for lunch?” He ventures.

“I actually think I’m gonna head back to my dorm now, thank you though.”

“Oh! I could walk you there,” Champ says, obviously not getting the vibe she’s giving. “My dorm’s back that way too.”

(From this Waverly concludes that he must be a sophomore. The boy is obviously older than her, and the second-year dorms are situated just near the freshman ones).

Their conversation is cut short when there’s a collision of sorts that ends with Waverly being splashed with something cold, though Champ takes the brunt of it. It catches her off guard, but when she gathers her bearings, she sees a Dunkin’ Donuts cup splattered on the ground, and hears Champ grumbling angrily about his shirt. The owner of the cup (she does her best to distinguish the beverage to be a French Vanilla iced cappuccino) is a girl who looks like she’s ready to profusely apologize until she sees who she’s bumped into, her expression turning into a scowl at what seems to be a record pace.

“Watch where the fuck you’re goin’, bitch,” Champ spits.

“Dude, literally, you walked into me,” the girl shouts back, bending down to pick up the cup off the ground and walking away visibly pissed off.

“Fuckin’ dyke bitch,” Champ grumbles, “ruined my good shirt.”

(Let it be known that his “good shirt” was an awful-looking checkered button-down short sleeved shirt that was most definitely bought a size too small on purpose to make his muscles look bigger. Let it also be known that it was by no means going to be ruined by a little bit of milk and espresso).

His comment was the final straw. She could excuse idiocy and vanity-laced attempts at chivalry, but she could not excuse homophobic slurs and being, as Wynonna had dubbed him, a _DoucheNozzle McFratBoy_.

“Seriously, Champ?” She scolds. “That’s wildly inappropriate.”

“What did I say?” He asks.

“Why don’t you think about it? See if you can think of _any_ words that might’ve been offensive or hurtful and then get back to me.”

She stomps away with her books, really hoping that he _doesn’t_ get back to her.

\---

Since her plan to lay low and avoid complicating her experience with a social life failed so spectacularly (and was completely impractical), Waverly decides her new plan is to avoid athletes at all costs—excluding her roommate of course.

She stumbles upon this conclusion after her research tells her that _Champ Hardy_ is the quarterback of the football team. Because _of course_ he is. She’d chuckled into her mug when she found his photo on the school’s athletics website and wondered if the boy even had the GPA to play. (Chrissy told her that the minimum GPA for second year athletes at the Division III level is 2.0, though she has a suspicion that’s a big ask for Champ). Further confirmation of her conclusion comes when she inevitably has to go to dinner at Res and was jostled around the buffet line by a group of rowdy guys from the men’s soccer team. This is compounded even further when she had to endure the group of football players who thought it fun to stand up on the chairs at their table one by one, screaming _“YURRRRR”_ at the top of their lungs (a totally useful activity, obviously).

Her plan to avoid all athletes at all costs goes considerably better than her first one. She survives Tuesday without incident and makes it all the way to her 8 AM class on Wednesday without so much as seeing someone decked out in some sort of sports gear. Her first college class ever is a Sociology class in the Liberal Arts building, which she struggles to find at first. For how ugly they look on the outside, the buildings at school look simple enough, so Waverly assumes they’d at least be pretty straightforward inside.

_Not even a little. She’s actually certain that the Minotaur could’ve escaped the labyrinth easier than she could find the right room in this building._

By the time she actually does find the room, she’s still not certain she’s in the right place. Especially when it’s 8:05 and the professor is nowhere to be seen. The other students in the room seem relatively unfazed by the absence, but Waverly finds herself nervously refreshing and rechecking her email to see if she’s got the right room or if she’s missed an email from the professor cancelling class.

A frail, nerdy looking boy shuffles into class behind a girl she recognizes but can’t place exactly. She doesn’t waste another second’s thought on the girl, seeing the _Corsairs Women’s Basketball_ t-shirt she’s wearing. (The only rule of her plan: avoid athletes at all costs).

The boy walks over nervously, eyeing the seat next to Waverly.

“Is anyone sitting there?” He asks.

The boy seems unassuming enough, if his Green Lantern t-shirt and beat-up Converse are any indication, so Waverly decides he’s not one she has to actively avoid.

“Oh! No,” she smiles at him and removes her water bottle from the desktop beside her, allowing him to sit down.

“I’m Jeremy,” he says, extending his hand.

“Waverly,” she introduces herself as she accepts the handshake.

As it turns out, she and Jeremy are the only two people who seem to be concerned by the absence of their professor at…8:11, while the rest of the students in the room appear to be waiting those final four minutes so that they can leave. (The old college cliché: “If the teacher’s not there within 15 minutes, we can just walk out”).

A redheaded woman trudges into the room at 8:14 and most of the others try to suppress their disappointed groans as their professor finally arrives. The woman tosses her backpack onto the seat behind the table at the front of the room and floats over to stand behind the podium, not bothering to remove her sunglasses. 

“Alright, first things first,” the professor says, “I am the _tiniest bit_ hungover, so if we could keep the noise to a minimum, that’d be great.” The class nods along. “Great. Perfect. Now I assume since you’ve all dragged yourselves out of bed so early that you are all here for Sociology 101 with yours truly.” Again the class nods along, the professor flipping her hair dramatically. “Amazing. Now, as we get started on my favorite subject— _Me—_ I swear to god if you call me _Professor Gardner_ or _Dr. Gardner_ or _Ms. Gardner_ , or literally anything other than Mercedes, I will not hesitate to fail you. Capice? _Capice._ ”

From beside her, she sees Jeremy scribbling that instruction into his notebook and she laughs to herself.

“Now why are we here? Mainly because this place pays me an _obscene_ amount of money to talk to you guys about how society works, but I’m gonna let you all in on a little secret,” Profes—Mercedes leans against the podium and lowers her voice to a whisper, “I have no clue how society works, and neither do any of you.”

Waverly sighs, leaning back in her seat a bit. Of course, _of course_ , she’d get stuck in a class like this. She thought that as an institution of learning this place would foster well, _learning_. She was skeptical that she’d get any useful information out of this class, though the other students didn’t appear to share the sentiment, all looking around at each other like this class would surely be an easy A.

“Unfortunately, I have to pretend I do, meaning I’ve got to teach you about boring old white men who had ideas about how society maybe worked and now we have to read what they wrote,” Mercedes continued. “Alright, I’m boring myself and I’ve got a headache so we’re gonna call it quits try again on

Friday. Homework tonight, read the syllabus that I’ll email you guys at some point and bring any questions you may have to class, but do me a favor and don’t have any questions, _please.”_

The class nodded, throwing their backpacks on, all excited to have a half hour before the next class block was set to start, all but running out of the classroom.

She knew that her class day could really only go up from there, and they did (for the most part), spending most of them going over the syllabus and doing stupid icebreakers. She’d had no real interest in the names of ninety percent of her peers, but in the spirit of “giving this place a chance”, she’d agreed to swap Snapchats with Jeremy when she spotted the boy in her Chemistry class. She didn’t need to make that many friends, but maybe just one outside of her roommate might be nice to have.

\---

The problem with planning to avoid socialization and stay focused on your studies in college is that it’s _entirely_ unfeasible.

She survives her two Thursday classes fairly painlessly, and Friday’s classes prove to be uneventful, the most interesting part being Mercedes’ terrible attempt (and immediate abandonment) of a French accent when introducing the work of Emile Durkheim.

Waverly was really looking forward to a relaxing night to herself—not only because it was her birthday—so when Chrissy hits her in the face with a bright yellow t-shirt, she’s confused and can already tell she’s not gonna like whatever her roommate’s about to say.

“Put this on, birthday girl,” Chrissy instructs her. She wants to question how the hell her roommate knew it was her birthday, but one: Chrissy _had_ added her on Snapchat after the trip to Dunkin’, and two: she’d had a sneaking suspicion that the brunette had been in contact with Wynonna ever since her sister had gone back home.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know what they call it in Canada, but here in America, we call it a t-shirt.”

“Yeah I got that part,” she pulls her face into a frown, “I mean what’s it for?”

“I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Weren’t you supposed to go to some _Ivy League_ school?” 

“Chrissy, what is _this_ t-shirt for,” she asks, holding it up to see the words _GAME STAFF_ written across the back.

“We needed people on the sidelines with extra balls to keep the game going if one goes out of bounds,” the brunette explains. “So I signed you up to volunteer.”

“You know volunteering implies that it was _voluntary_.”

“And _I_ voluntarily volunteered _you.”_

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Come on Waves,” Chrissy pouts, “it’s the first game. It’ll be fun, and it _would_ be nice for you to support your roommate in her first college game.”

And so, come 6:30, Waverly curses Chrissy Nedley the whole walk down toward the athletic center. (Her roommate had already forced her into working the game, the least she could’ve done was give her a ride down to where she needed to be).

The music from the field is loud, like _loud_ loud. So loud, in fact, that she can here it from where she walks on Ring Road. Apparently tonight’s game is a big one. From what Chrissy explained to her, their league rivals from Connecticut are in town and it’s been _years_ since they’ve come out victorious. There aren’t many spectators there, but definitely more than what she expected for a field hockey game? Match? _Outing_? (Whatever).

She can see the combination football/lacrosse/soccer/field hockey field from the top of the small hill that houses the main athletic building— home to the staff offices, the fitness center, the natatorium, and the basketball court. As _HUMBLE_ transitions into _Clique_ on the home team’s warmup tape, Waverly is nearly knocked over by a couple of the football players rowdily leaving the Athletic Center. She huffs and straightens out her shirt, thanking her lucky stars that Champ Hardy is too focused on the _total rager_ they’re gonna throw after they win their game tomorrow to notice her.

She bears an unnecessary, but like totally necessary, grudge against the athletes. It’s probably an unfair umbrella to group all of the members of the sports teams here, but it’s easier to assume that they’re all cocky, egotistical maniacs who have way too many privileges around the school.

Finally able to gain access to the field, she treads onto the turf, feeling the soft rubber pellets getting into her sneakers like little bits of gravel that find their way into your shoes. She already hates it here, she decides, knowing she’ll have to shake the shoes out before she goes back to her dorm. She looks around the players on the field, searching for someone who can tell her what she’s supposed to be doing. She spots another guy in a shirt similar to hers, whose track suit just _screams_ he’s on the soccer team, and she thinks he might be her best bet, especially when he starts striding over to her.

“Hey, you’re here for the game, right?”

“Uh, yeah, where do you want me?” She asks.

The guy frowns at her, looking lost.

“Wait, you’re not in charge?”

“No. I thought you were. Aren’t you like an athlete or something?” She motions toward his Adidas get-up. 

“Me? An athlete?” He laughs like Waverly just told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “My dad wishes.”

“But your outfit.”

“One always has to look the part,” he brushes off the shoulder of his track jacket.

“Right, obviously. So you’re just a volunteer without a clue too. Good to know.”

“I thought I was volunteering to take pictures for the game, but apparently I’m just the ball boy.”

“Hey same! But I didn’t volunteer, my roommate signed me up against my will,” she says with an honest smile, not exactly pissed at Chrissy, but not overwhelmingly pleased either. Knowing that this kid is in the same boat as her, she figures he’s okay (especially now that she knows he’s not an athlete) and opts to introduce herself. Screw not making friends, she decides, it’s so _not_ Waverly Earp anyway. “I’m Waverly.”

“Ah, nice to meet you Waverly,” he takes her hand when he extends it to her. “I’m Robin, and if we could find someone who knows what the hell is going on around here, we could get this event _over with_ and I can make it back to my dorm hopefully cut into some of my _Drag Race_ recordings.”

She snorts at this and follows the boy as they walk aimlessly around the field looking for direction while the two teams continue their warmups. They dodge a ball that misses the cage and skids toward the padded fence at a speed too fast for either of their liking. Robin slaps her on the arm, when he spots the scorer’s table set just beyond the 50-yard line. When they reach it, they’re rewarded with the guidance they’re looking for.

The problem is, the guidance is the tall redhead that Waverly recognizes from every single one of her classes, the one on the basketball team who has managed to be in a different piece of Corsair athletic gear every time Waverly has seen her. The one currently juggling field hockey balls in front of the head athletic trainer with a cockiness that Waverly can’t even begin to describe. She can’t help but find something so _pretentious_ about everything about the girl—from her stupid cuffed sleeves, to her black Nike sweatshorts, to the way that her black and white Air Maxes inexplicably don’t crease as she walks over to her and Robin, and especially the way she chews on her gum and doesn’t remove her sunglasses when she starts talking to them. (The sun was still peeking over the horizon, but there was hardly the need for sunglasses—total douchebag move, Waverly can’t help but sneer).

“Ya’ll are here to be ball boys, right?” The redhead asks, sitting herself on the edge of the table. Waverly huffs silently and debates telling the girl that _technically_ she wasn’t a ball _boy_. (She decides it’s not worth it in the long run).

“Yeah,” Robin nods.

“Alright, so really simple, all ya need to know is that when the ball goes out of bounds, you roll one—do _not_ toss them, these things hurt like a motherfucker—to the player asking for it, and then you go chase after the one that went out of bounds.”

“That’s all?” Waverly asks. “We don’t need to know anything about the game?”

(She’d had many more questions—why do they need three ball _people?_ Why isn’t there an actual gender-neutral term for _ball boy_? And perhaps most importantly, what the hell even was a Corsair?)

“The rules are too annoying and too complex to get into and there’s not enough time right now,” the redhead says, “so just give them a ball when they need one and chase after the ones that go out of bounds.”

And that was that. No introductions, no formalities, just a quick instruction and then three bright orange balls being forced into her hand. Waverly finds herself on the same side of the field as the player benches, and on the half with the home team, so she catches Chrissy’s eye as they line up for starting lineups and the playing of the National Anthem.

The second the game got started, she found herself _abundantly_ confused. Sports had never really been her thing anyway, but this was so far outside her realm of understanding she wasn’t exactly sure what she was watching. The game itself looked like some hellish combination of ice hockey and soccer, though it was hard to gauge because the whistle blew every five seconds, causing the play to stop. It took a while, but she finally came to the conclusion that the ball was most definitely not allowed to hit your feet, which she thought was a good rule because holding one in her hand, the thing was heavy and it was _hard_ and definitely hurt if you got hit by one.

Despite her limited knowledge of the rules, she was good at her job. When the ball went out of bounds, she was right on top of rolling it in, even before the players called for it, allowing the game to flow as much as it could with all other stoppages. The redhead across the field is every bit as annoying from afar as she is up close and it physically _pains_ Waverly to hold back her eye roll every time the girl finds a new, inventive, increasingly cocky way to roll the ball back into play.

Late in the second half, with the game still deadlocked at 0-0, Waverly caught Chrissy check into the game for one of the upperclassmen, presumably just to give them a breather. Her roommate hadn’t played much, but that was to be expected as a freshman, and it didn’t stop her from laying her stick down to block her opponent and cleanly take the ball away and break up the left side of the field. Waverly found herself oddly excited and engrossed in the game as Chrissy passed the ball over to one of her teammates who took one step into the little half circle (that Waverly was sure was important to the game in some capacity) and ripped a shot toward the cage. The ball bounced off of the goalies pads, leaving a big rebound for Chrissy to follow and swing at, the ball sounding off of the wood that made up the bottom of the cage, putting the home team up 1-0 with very little time remaining.

Chrissy was mobbed momentarily to celebrate the goal before she picked up the ball and jogged back to the 50-yard line, dropping it in the middle for the other team to start the game on the ref’s whistle. Even for someone who knew next to nothing about the sport, she knew that Chrissy had done something good and would probably earn herself a bit more game time going forward.

_“Corsairs goal scored by number thirteen, Christine Nedley, assisted by number seven Rosita Bustillos.”_

The crowd cheered as Chrissy’s name was announced, and Waverly can’t help but laugh at Chrissy’s full name, _Christine_ just sounding so _wrong_ for the girl. From just over the fence, a mustached man with a Stetson claps and hollers louder than anyone else in the vicinity, and she assumes that that’s her father.

Waverly, dare she say it, enjoys the game, especially when the home team wins. Robin finds her after the game and he comments about how unnecessarily violent it was for a women’s non-contact sport. She chuckles and decides he’s a cool guy she wouldn’t mind being friends with, and she’ll definitely need him if she’s going to survive the entirety of field hockey season doing this. Because apparently, Chrissy failed to mention that volunteering her for one game meant she was signed up for all the games). Annoyed by the thought of spending any more time with Miss Cocky Redhead, she realizes she’s got a bone to pick with the girl and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t air her grievances.

Before she can find the redhead and march over to her, there’s a tap on her shoulder and just the girl she’s looking for when she spins around.

“What do you want?” Waverly asks, a bit harsher than her normal tone, but appropriate for her grudge (that this girl knows nothing about).

“You have my balls,” the girl says, still chewing on her gum.

“What?”

“Not my balls, but…” she nods toward the bright orange balls still in her hands from the game.

“Right,” Waverly hands her the balls. “You know, has anyone ever told you you have terrible people skills?”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” The redhead asks in a weird New England way where the words are angry but the tone is less so.

“You give us orders, me and Robin, before you even introduce yourself. That’s like People Skills 101.”

“Is that a class you’re teaching?” The redhead smirks, “Because I’d be happy to take it.”

“Seriously?”

“Okay, I just usually don’t have to introduce myself around here.” She raises her hands in defense; Waverly crosses her arms, hoping she comes off unamused and mildly annoyed. “I just assumed you knew who I was.”

“Well that’s not the case, now is it?”

“Nicole Haught,” the redhead, _Nicole_ , winks at her.

She fucking _winked_. Who the _fuck_ does she think she is?

“Seriously?” Waverly scoffs.

“What now?”

“That’s your name? Like your honest to god name? _Haught_?”

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

“No, I just think it’s ridiculous,” Waverly says. (She figures that it’s probably why Nicole literally thinks she’s hot shit, but she keeps that comment to herself).

“Woah, woah, woah,” Nicole stops her, “now who’s failing People Skills 101? I’m pretty sure it’s not very nice to make fun of people’s names like that. If my name’s so ridiculous, then what’s yours?”

“Waverly Earp,” she says with a proud nod and she’s met with a laugh from Nicole.

“And you have the nerve to make fun of my name.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Waverly frowns and buries her arms deeper into herself.

“Nothing,” Nicole snickers, “I just think it’s ridiculous.”

And yeah, _okay_ , Waverly guesses she walked right into that one.

\---

So apparently, Waverly Earp is terrible at sticking to plans.

Plan number one: Get into Dartmouth (the Ivy League one). _Fail._

Plan number two: Lay low and don’t add to your misery with a social life. _Fail._

Plan number three: Making friends is okay, just avoid athletes.

That one she’d been partially successful for. On the one hand, she’d made friends with both Robin and Jeremy within the first week. On the other, her roommate was an athlete (though she supposed she considered Chrissy to be a friend), so she should’ve figured that avoiding athletes at all costs was a plan that was doomed from the start.

Something that was becoming increasingly evident was the fact that she was much more easily swayed than she originally thought. Or maybe Chrissy Nedley was just _really_ persuasive.

It was, at the very least, the reason she found herself in between Chrissy and a few of her teammates at the football game the day after her debut as ball girl.

There’s considerably more people at this game than at the one last night, so many so that both sets of bleachers on both sides of the field are full and there’s a considerable gathering of students, parents and local fans underneath the canopy of trees that surround the field. The home team is down 28-3, a score that Waverly assumes is pretty much insurmountable considering the time remaining on the clock, but nobody seems to be worried and are cheering as if this were a close game.

“Can we go?” Waverly asks, even more disinterested in the game than she was when she got there. “Obviously this game is over.”

“Over?” Chrissy scoffs.

“28-3 is good luck around here,” the teammate she recognizes as Rosita says to her. She’s a year older than she and Chrissy are, but went to the same high school as Chrissy and they’ve been friends and teammates for years.

“How would being down 25 points be lucky?”

They both look at her like she’s been living under a rock, but it doesn’t change the confusion she feels.

“Dude, the Super Bowl?” Chrissy tries, but Waverly only leans her head in, wanting more information. “Pats-Falcons? Greatest comeback of all time?” Still not ringing any bells. “It was literally this year.”

“Not a big follower of American football,” she shrugs. She’s not a big follower of football or sports in general, really.

Not getting anywhere on the leaving early front, Waverly turns back in time to watch Champ heave a pass from the 25-yard line. The crowd erupts as it lands safely in the arms of a receiver in the back of the endzone. The _Pirates of the Caribbean_ theme song booms through the speakers as the team celebrates, the stadium announcer a little overly enthusiastic in announcing the result of the play. 

_“Champ Hardy completes the 25-yard pass to Harry Sullivan for a CORSAIR TOUCHDOWN!!!!”_

The quarterback jogs over to the sideline, receiving pats on the back for the big play. He removes his helmet, scanning the crowd as he squirts water from one of the bottles into his mouth. His eyes land on Waverly and he smirks and winks at her, making her lose her fight with the urge to roll her eyes. The interaction doesn’t go unnoticed by Chrissy and Rosita.

“Ooh girl,” Chrissy nudges her, “looks like QB’s got the hots for you.” Waverly only shrugs it off, very clearly to her roommate’s dismay. “Not even a week ago you were all about him, and now you don’t care?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

_“Why?”_

“Just, not into football players,” she says, and it’s not a lie. It’s just not the only reason she doesn’t like Champ Hardy.

“Preach it sister,” Rosita offers her a high five, but there’s a certain vibe the girl gives off that Waverly can’t quite place.

“Didn’t you go out with him last year?” Chrissy teases.

“Correction, we hooked up last year, _once_ , which is why I know not to go after these football guys.”

This information seems to be enough for Chrissy, who drops the conversation and turns back in time to watch the visitors break off for a long run through the defense, being tackled just before the goal line. They’ve run the clock down to under a minute and Waverly praises the heavens because it means they’re that much closer to getting out of there and back to her dorm where her Chemistry homework awaits her.

Unfortunately, while she’s leaving the field, she finds herself separated from the pack of field hockey players in the crowd of rapidly dispersing fans. Doubly unfortunately, she finds herself alone by a tree going through her phone to call Chrissy as the football players trek across the path from the field to their locker room inside the Athletic Center.

She smells him before she sees him.

“Hey, what a game, huh?” He says, leaning against the tree, practically pinning her there trapped under the scent of his _violent football man stench_. (Maybe this was what Chrissy meant by the “Grim Reaper’s asshole”).

“Something like that.”

“Totally should’ve won that game, but the refs blew it for us,” he says. From what she saw out there, it was hardly the refs that had cost them the game, rather the fact that Champ could only connect one out of every four passes and the defense looked like Swiss cheese. “I threw that touchdown pass for you though, pretty sweet, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugs, trying to find a way to leave the conversation, irritated by the boy’s presence. “Look, I gotta go.”

“Oh, come on,” he grumbles, putting his arm against the tree and blocking her path out. There’s a feeling of discomfort and uneasiness that grows in the pit of her stomach. “I was thinking,” he presses on, ignoring every vibe she’s putting out, “that maybe you could come to the party with me tonight— _Boys’ House_ , it’s gonna be epic. When that goes well, maybe you wear my jersey to the next game, and I start callin’ you _Shawty_ in public.”

“No, Champ,” she says, trying to push her way through the guy in front of her who’s much bigger than she is, even without all his football gear.

“Really? Even if I ask with this face,” he juts his lip out and frowns, doing his best to look like he’s begging. “Come on, you’re hot, I’m hot, we’d be a pretty big deal around here if we—”

“—Heya Hardy, Tom Brady ain’t got nothin’ on you, kid.”

A boy much taller than Champ steps in and slings his arm over the quarterback’s shoulders, pulling him away from the tree, putting himself between the sweaty boy and Waverly. If anything, Waverly’s grateful for the distraction, still frazzled from the interaction with Champ.

“Well yeah, obviously,” Champ nods proudly like he’s just won an award. Humility, she should’ve assumed, was not this kid’s strong suit.

“Party’s still on for tonight, right?” The taller of the two asks.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well I heard Ol’ Sheriff Nedley’s gonna be sniffin’ around, first weekend back and all. You might wanna secure your supply, wouldn’t want it to get confiscated before the first party of the season.”

“Oh shit,” realization washes over Champ’s face. He jogs off toward the Athletic Center, offering a hasty, “Gotta go, see you at the party tonight Avery.”

Waverly rolls her eyes at the boy, but overall releases the breath she realizes she’d been holding.

“Thank you,” she says to the boy who distracted Champ.

“Nah, don’t mention it. Hardy doesn’t really understand the meaning of the word ‘no’,” he responds, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

There’s something vaguely familiar about the boy that she can’t wrap her head around, like she’d spoken to him before. Or someone who looked scarily like him.

“I gathered that.”

“It’s not exactly _right_ , not to tell him off, but it is _easier_ to distract him and remove him from the situation.”

The boy talks and Waverly hears him, but she’s distracted trying to place where she knows this kid. The rational part of her brain is telling her that she’s two thousand miles from home and she knows everyone back in her hometown, so it’s practically impossible that she actually knows the guy, but still she can’t shake the feeling.

“Guys are the worst,” she huffs, and then realizes she’s talking to the guy who just saved her from an uncomfortable, tracking toward dangerous, situation, “no offense.”

“Oh none taken, I get it,” he chuckles.

“I meant like _guys_ , douchey musclehead athlete guys.” The boy just laughs at her comments, confusing Waverly. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he says, “just your generalization of a whole complex group of people.”

“What?” She asks, and when he just smiles at her, coaxing her to her realization, she gasps, “Oh my god! You’re an athlete, aren’t you?”

“I like to think of myself as an okay basketball player.” Waverly goes red in the face at his revelation. Perhaps her generalization was a _little_ unfair, because even after a few minutes, she knew this kid was a nice guy. He picks up on her embarrassment and offers, “Don’t worry, I knew what you meant. I _also_ hate douchey muscle bros—the Champ Hardys of the world, they’re the _worst_.”

Now the sense that she’s met this kid before is _killing_ her. She racks her brain, trying to connect the dots—tall, basketball player, big brown eyes, medium length red hair that curled at the ends (kind of like a baseball player). It’s on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t name it.

She surrenders to the curiosity, and figures getting his name is the only way to get her answer.

“Right, well thanks again,” she says, “I’m Waverly, by the way.”

“I had a feeling it wasn’t Avery,” the kid smiles, shaking the hand she’d offered him. “Hardy’s not the best listener.”

The boy doesn’t make it easy on her, all she wants to know is what his damn name is, and he wants to crack jokes. She smiles back at him expectantly, hoping he’ll get the message to introduce himself.

“Cooper Haught,” he says finally, and the dots connect in her head. _No way. NO freaking WAY. Obviously someone was playing a practical joke on her._ She must’ve reacted visibly, because his next comment is, “Judging by that face, I’m guessing you met my sister.”

She thinks of her annoyance at the redhead last night and compares it to the cordial, friendly, not overtly cocky guy in front of her.

“Uh, yeah, Nicole, right?”

“Mhm,” Cooper nods, “she comes off a little…well, she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but really she’s a lovely girl.”

“You’re just saying that because she’s your sister.”

“If you have siblings you know for a _fact_ I’m saying it _despite_ the fact she’s my sister” he shrugs, “but it’s kinda true. You just gotta get to know her.”

Waverly mulls this over, deciding she’ll need physical proof from the cocky redhead before she believes her brother. She snickers internally at the fact she’d managed to meet both Cooper and Nicole Haught in less than 24 hours. And then…

“Wait!” She interjects. “Your name is _Cooper Haught?_ Like that’s your real, legal, on your birth certficiate name?”

“Yep.”

“Your parents already set you up with puns about your last name, and then decided to give you the one name that sounds exactly like _super_?”

“Yep.”

“That’s hilarious,” she can’t stifle her laughter at this point.

“It’s not even the best part,” Cooper tells her, “they wanted to name Nicole _Rayleigh_ —like _really_ , so their twins would—”

“—You guys are twins?”

She supposes she should’ve seen it, now staring down the exact male copy of Nicole Haught.

“I’m a whole fourteen minutes older and will hold that over Nicole until my last dying breath,” Cooper says with a triumphant air about him. “But, Moms figured that Cooper and Rayleigh Haught would get bullied in school, so they named her Nicole. Their compromise was that Pops got to pick our middle names.”

“Dare I ask?” Judging by the way Cooper smirks at the dad joke created by his father, she has a suspicion as to what they might be.

“Maxwell and Rayleigh.”

She snorts at that, and then at the differences in becoming acquainted with the Haught twins. _Cooper Maxwell Haught—_ super chill, seems like he could be a nice friend (even if he is a basketball player). _Nicole Rayleigh Haught_ —jury’s still out, but the first impression is not great.


	3. Rule #3: Participate in Extracurriculars

“I don’t know Wynonna,” she sighs into the phone. She’s bored, and not even the mountain of homework she’s actively avoiding can seem to fix it.

_“Babygirl, you gotta go out and explore…live your life…seize the day…make oysters for the world or whatever.”_

“Definitely not how that one goes.”

 _“Regardless,”_ Wynonna presses on, _“if you’re so bored, find something to fill your time. I hear partying’s a big deal on the college scene these days.”_

“No.”

_“Join a club, then?”_

“No sense in that,” she refutes again, momentarily shifting her focus to her laptop. She places her phone on speaker so she can still talk to her sister. “I’m only gonna be here until December.”

She hopes, at least. She’s refreshed the page for the _zillionth_ time today (like she has every day since she sent it online in June), hoping to see a change in her Dartmouth application status. It’s nearing October and Waverly would _really_ like to know she won’t be here come January. She groans again when she sees the annoyingly familiar word: _PENDING_.

_“You could always join a sorority.”_

“It’s like you’re not even listening to me.”

 _“Look, you’ve called every night since you got there telling me about how_ bored _you are, and then you completely shoot down all my suggestions for fun,”_ Wynonna’s words are stern and Waverly feels a rare moment of insight coming from her sister, _“I know you, and this whole antisocial thing isn’t the Waverly Earp I know. What happened to Little Miss Cheer Captain, President of Every Club at Purg High?”_ Waverly sits there, silent. Wynonna was right, this _wasn’t_ who she was. Her sister continues when she realizes she’s not getting a response. _“Even if you’re only gonna be there for a little while, that’s no reason for you to be miserable. Maybe you’ll make some friends you can keep even when you change schools.”_

“I made friends.”

 _“Friends outside your roommate?”_ Wynonna probes, skeptical of the information she’s taking in.

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you about them?”

_“All you told me was your rant about the cocky basketball player—how’s that going, by the way?”_

Waverly hopes Wynonna can sense her eye roll. Her experience with the redhead has hardly improved; if anything, it’s gotten worse.

“She’s just _so_ annoying,” she grumbles, “she walks around this place like she’s god or something. I can’t seem to get away from her. She’s in all my classes and then I have to see her at Chrissy’s games. It’s like she’s everywhere and she knows she gets under my skin and just keeps antagonizing. She’s just—”

 _“—Annoying? Yeah, I got that.”_ There’s a chuckle on the other end of the line; Waverly realizes she’s just described Wynonna _to_ Wynonna. _“What’s her name again?”_

“Nicole Haught,” she says, disgust filling her voice.

 _“Seriously?”_ Wynonna snickers, amused. _“You ever think_ that’s _why she acts like hot shit?”_

“I did, until I met her brother.”

 _“Brother?”_ She could see Wynonna’s ears perk up in interest from all the way back in Purgatory.

“It’s not like that,” Waverly shuts down immediately. “He’s just like the total opposite of Nicole—he’s nice, and friendly, and decidedly _not_ annoying.”

_“So she’s like his evil twin?”_

“I know you’re joking, but they actually are twins.”

 _“Are they hot? Ya know, the_ Haught _Twins?”_

“No, Wynonna.”

_“Not even a little?”_

“I don’t know,” she leans her head back gently, knocking it into the wall exasperated. “Can we talk about something else?”

 _“Okay fine,”_ Wynonna relents; Waverly’s glad she doesn’t push the issue. _“Does the good twin have a name? Since you’re friends and all. Unless you call him ‘Not Nicole’.”_

“Cooper,” Waverly answers, already preparing herself for the inevitable cackling from her sister.

It comes, but it abates quicker than the younger brunette expects. _“Waves, tell me he’s at least_ not _ugly. Because if not, naming that kid_ Cooper Haught _should be classified as some kind of child abuse.”_

“No, he’s not ugly.”

_“Okay, so there’s super hot Cooper Haught,” Wynonna continues, “How ‘bout the rest of this posse you’ve assembled?”_

“It’s not a posse. There’s Cooper, and then there’s Jeremy, he’s kinda awkward but like in a charming way,” she explains, thinking of the boy’s tendency to ramble when he’s nervous—usually (especially) in Mercedes’ class. “And then there’s Robin—I met him working at the field hockey game. He knows just as much, if not less than I do. But he’s pretty cool too.”

 _“So what I’m hearing is my baby sister went away to college and immediately surrounded herself with men,”_ Wynonna’s smirk is evident even through the phone, _“you start day drinking and you’ll_ really _be an Earp.”_

“Shut it, asshole. You’re lucky I’m not there to smack you,” she frowns. “I’ve made friends with girls.”

_“Chrissy doesn’t count. You’re stuck with her.”_

“No, Wynonna, I’m serious. I made friends with one of Chrissy’s teammates, Rosita.”

It wasn’t a lie exactly. She hadn’t taken to speaking to the girl on any sort of regular basis, but she hung around in their room with Chrissy more often than not, so she considered the girl a friend by association.

 _“Well then I’m proud of you for making friends,”_ Wynonna praises. _“But now you have no excuse to call me up and tell me how bored you are. I swear to god if you don’t go out and find something to do with your time, I’ll hike my ass out there and make you do it myself.”_

\---

 _Find something to do with my time_ , Waverly thinks to herself, _simple enough, right?_

Wrong.

Waverly doesn’t know much about the school. Don’t get her wrong, she knows a few things. She knows that the football team sucks. She knows that she can’t seem to get over how ugly the buildings are. She knows that there are four Dunkin’s within a half-mile of campus ( _not_ including the one on campus in the library). And she knows, after looking it up, that a Corsair is a fancy name for a pirate (though maybe she should’ve figured it out earlier from the _obscene_ number of pirate head logos on every building).

But really, Waverly doesn’t really know anything _useful_ about the school.

So she bites the bullet and turns to an on-campus lifeline.

“I need your help,” Waverly says pulling on Chrissy’s headphones, the dampened sound of _Two Ghosts_ by Harry Styles coming out of the small buds.

“I got you bitch, whatcha need?” Her roommate’s response is surprisingly more _ride or die_ than Waverly expects, though she suspects Chrissy’s grateful for an excuse to not be doing her homework.

She bites the inside of her cheek, disbelieving she’s actually about to ask this. Waverly’d never had trouble finding a niche before, so why now?

 _Maybe because you actually wanted to before. Maybe because you weren’t in the completely_ wrong _place._

“I need your help finding something to join around campus, so I’m not so bor—”

“—Say no more, say no more. Chrissy’s got you.”

(A phrase that would later go down in _Words Spoken Moments Before Disaster_ ).

\---

Chrissy’s idea of helping is, of course, rushing a sorority together. 

The first event is in one of the smaller classrooms adjacent to the campus center. Waverly’s already not sure she wants any part of this to begin with, but listens to Chrissy anyway, deciding _anything_ would be better than the crippling boredness she’d been experiencing.

“OH. MY. GOD!” An obnoxiously peppy voice greets them before they can open the door to the room. On top of the assault on her eardrums, Waverly’s smacked in the face with the overbearing scent of essential oils, bad Victoria’s Secret perfume and…cupcakes? (It’s a lot). “Welcome to the first night of Phi Sig Recruitment Week! My name’s Gracie, and you are?”

Waverly looks at Chrissy skeptically. She’s already turned off by the smells, and a quick peek behind Gracie reveals the room decked out seemingly wall-to-wall in any and everything that could be neon pink and purple—streamers, tablecloths, balloons. (She feels like she’s at a middle school birthday party).

“I’m Chrissy and this is Waverly,” her roommate answers for the both of them before she can even think to protest.

Gracie hits them with a smile that can in no way be natural and grants them access to the rest of the room. The other girls inside turn their attention to the newcomers and Waverly feels her skin crawl. The decorations are _much_ worse now that she’s seeing the full scope of their brightness and she tries to conceal her judging look as she takes in the other girls (Collectively they look like a gang of Lilly Pulitzer models).

“Alright, this should be everyone,” Gracie cheers, closing the door behind her. “This is Chrissy and Waverly.”

 _“Hi sisters,”_ the rest of them speak eerily in unison, making Waverly feel like she’s at some sort of cult meeting.

Gracie stands at the front of the room behind one of the three tables set up along the perimeter. She goes over the “normal information night” speech before introducing tonight’s activities. It’s supposed to be a sort of icebreaker, get to know everyone type of night, which is obviously why a combination Cupcake Decorating-Make Your Own Bath Bomb Party is completely necessary.

Waverly is overwhelmed from a sensory standpoint, but severely underwhelmed with the whole sorority concept. She has more than a feeling tonight will be a one-time experience and will not be attending the rest of the week’s events. From beside her at the cupcake station, Chrissy looks just as underwhelmed.

That being said, the brunette isn’t about to turn down cupcakes. So she smiles and doesn’t turn down the mostly bland conversation coming from these girls, and lathers the purple frosting on her cake hoping to make time pass faster. (It doesn’t).

What _does_ make time pass faster is when Chrissy accidently knocks her cupcake onto one of the Lilly Pulitzer model’s—Stephanie Jones with the fake blonde hair and the caked on makeup—dress. It doesn’t even really leave a mark, but the shriek that escapes the blonde’s mouth sounds like someone just smeared used motor oil all over her outfit.

“Oh shit, my bad,” Chrissy apologizes. 

“You _bitch_! You ruined my dress,” Stephanie snaps, reminding Waverly of when Champ had a cappuccino spilt all over him. She’s starting to think that everyone at this school was violently overdramatic. “You’re gonna pay to have this cleaned.”

The blonde looks millimeters away from killing Chrissy, so Waverly decides to step in to mediate the situation. “Woah, hey, it was an accident.”

Not taking kindly to this (going 0 to 100 real fuckin’ quick), Stephanie turns her anger toward Waverly. “Oh yeah? You think it’s an accident? I’ll show you an accident.”

Stephanie grabs a cupcake from the plate on the table and jams it into Waverly’s chest, smearing bright pink frosting across the fabric of the brunette’s dress. As far as Earps went, Stephanie’s lucky she got Waverly and not Wynonna. But, Waverly was still an Earp, so instead of a flurry of fists, she hits the bitch with the cupcake she’d been decorating, _this_ time leaving a mark with the frosting. Chrissy laughs from beside her, but Stephanie isn’t amused.

It’s the catalyst for the chaos that ends in Waverly, Chrissy and Stephanie being physically tossed out of the room, covered in frosting and sprinkles, scowling at each other. Apparently, starting a massive food fight on day one was _not_ the way to gain entry to a sorority. (It was, however, the way to create one of those hilarious college memories that TV and movies try to portray).

Stephanie shoots them a death glare and stomps off, a hilarious mess in a ridiculous dress, while Chrissy and Waverly walk down the hallway to the bathroom to clean up.

“Sorry I got us kicked out,” Waverly picks a bunch of sprinkles out of her hair as she apologizes. Her roommate had actually seemed excited about the prospect of joining a sorority.

“Dude, are you kidding?” Her roommate chuckles as she pulls a few paper towels from the dispenser. “That food fight was the most interesting thing about that shindig. And badass by the way. Stephanie Jones has been a raging bitch since the third grade.”

“You know her?”

“She lives in the town over from mine, but closer to the elementary school in ours, so we went to school together up until seventh. She hates my guts,” Chrissy adds nonchalantly like she couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the girl’s opinion of her. “But you, sticking up for me—thanks by the way—was the highlight of my night. Guess I was wrong about sororities. Maybe not all of them, but definitely any one that Stephanie Jones is interested in.”

Waverly smiles and laughs softly under her breath, taking in the reflection of the two of them in the bathroom mirror.

“God, we look ridiculous, don’t we?”

They’re a collage of pink and purple frosting, all over their faces, in their hair, and on their clothes, garnished with sprinkles and edible glitter—kind of like if a unicorn had thrown on up on them.

Chrissy nods in agreement, handing her a paper towel.

In terms of finding something interesting to do on campus, the whole sorority thing may have been a predictable disaster, but Waverly can’t deny the night had been one of the most fun she’d had in a while. (Obviously her Earp blood gave her a genetic predisposition to partaking in troublemaking and disasters).

\---

After her Phi Sig disaster, she turns to Jeremy for some insight. The boy seems to be well-adjusted enough to the school, so Waverly figures he may be able to help.

Unfortunately, his idea of a gathering was his Biochemistry Society pizza party, which was a total snooze fest. The pair resolved to go to the University Club and Activities Fair, hoping to find something that might spark joy or inspiration. They leave the fair with endless pamphlets, but nothing even remotely interesting.

She slumps herself down in her seat in Mercedes’ class, more than a little frustrated that she, Waverly Earp, can’t find _one_ extracurricular worth her time at this god forsaken school. She’s complaining to Jeremy about it when her nuisance rears its ugly head again.

“You know, if you’re looking for something to do, you could always work in the training room,” the redhead says, stopping by the pair instead of heading to her seat. “They’re always looking for help in there.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Waverly crosses her arms, really hoping Nicole gets the hint that she can’t stand her. (If she does, Nicole doesn’t let it deter her).

“Well, it’d give you something to do. And it would give you a chance to see your _best friend_ more often,” she says with smirk that makes Waverly want to stand up and walk straight out of the classroom.

“I see my best friend plenty,” Waverly says, nudging Jeremy on the shoulder to prove her point. The boy smiles proudly at the mention of his name. As far as she was concerned, Jeremy and Chrissy were her best friends around here.

“Whatever, just trying to help you out,” Nicole shrugs. “But it’s your loss, Earp. I’m kind of the shit.”

The redhead winks as she walks to her seat and Waverly’s about to stand up to…she’s not sure exactly—maybe smack the smugness off of the basketball player’s face—when Mercedes strolls into class wearing a grey hoodie and carrying an umbrella even though there’s quite literally not a cloud in the sky outside.

“Alright sit down, sit down,” the professor points the green umbrella at the students milling about the room, “today we’re going _Full Britney_.”

\---

Waverly desperately eyes the library lecture hall where her bio class resides, in a full sprint to get there before it starts. Dr. Lucado is one of those hardo professors who locks the door right at 11 on the dot and doesn’t bat an eye for anyone. Feeling the sweat bead up along her hairline from the exertion, she glances at her watch— _10:59_. She cursed her history class for running way over time, leaving her with no time to get to her next class.

She (honest to god) skids to a halt in front of the closed door, terrified she’d been late and marked absent, only to find a paper taped to the door:

**_BIO 101-04 WITH DR. LUCADO (MWF 11:00-11:50) HAS BEEN CANCELLED FOR FRIDAY 9/29_ **

Waverly can’t believe her eyes; can’t believe she did the freshman sprint clear across campus all for her class to be cancelled anyway. When she checks her email on her phone, she’s furious to see that Dr. Lucado hadn’t even emailed them ahead of time about the cancellation.

Seeing as her next and final class of the day is in an hour and in the lecture hall next door to her bio class, she slings her bag back over her shoulder and takes her annoyance over to a nearby table to get some homework done. She gets about halfway through an article on ancient civilizations before she sees a familiar pair of green Crocs approaching her.

_Great. Perfect. Just what I need right now._

She resolves to ignore them, for her own sanity. It’s another annoyance she doesn’t need right now. Unfortunately, the thing about annoyances is they don’t go away once they know they can get to you.

When the Crocs don’t move from where she sees them on the floor, Waverly begrudgingly looks away from her book and scowls at the redhead in front of her. She’s got her hair down with a white ballcap flipped around backwards, wearing _yet another_ different school athletics shirt—a white t-shirt with the pirate logo and the words _It’s A Corsair Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand_ in navy blue—navy blue sweatpants emblazoned with the logo of the basketball team with the legs tucked into her white Nike crew socks, the outfit topped off with those _stupid_ lime green Crocs.

“Do you ever wear _anything_ else?” She leans her back against the seat, crossing her arms.

“Oh, so you notice what I’m wearing every day?” Nicole smirks (winks), pulling out the seat across from Waverly and sitting at the table. (Without invitation, mind you).

“What? No?” She stammers defensively, which causes the smug look on the face of the girl in front of her to grow. “I’m just saying you walk around here looking like a dumb jock, in _Crocs_ —”

“I’ll have you know that these Crocs are very fashionable in the _dumb jock_ community.”

Waverly grits her teeth, not amused in the slightest at the way Nicole threw her words back at her.

“What’re you doing here?” She reopens her book, hoping the redhead is at least smart enough to pick up on the signal she’s giving her.

“We have class, obviously.”

“Speaking of,” Waverly notes the iced cappuccino Nicole has in front of her, “you show up here…” she peeks at her watch, “ _fifteen_ minutes after Lucado’s class is supposed to start, _with_ Dunks, do you have a death wish? You’re lucky class was cancelled.”

“Dude,” Nicole chuckles as she sips from her straw, holding up her phone to show Waverly, “class group chat. I’ve known all morning that Lucado’s was cancelled.”

“Group chat?”

“What, you’re not in it?”

Waverly looks at Nicole like she’s an actual idiot. Of course she wasn’t in it. “No, I just sprinted across campus ‘cause I thought it’d be a fun thing to do.”

“God, you’re such a freshman,” Nicole snorts, deepening Waverly’s scowl. “Here, I’ll add you, give me your number.”

“Not happening.”

“Why not?” Nicole quirks an eyebrow.

“How do I know you don’t just want my number?”

She’d seen Nicole around campus and heard enough to know that Nicole Haught had a collection of girls’ phone numbers longer than the Declaration of Independence.

“Waverly, just give me your damn number so I can add you to the group chat,” the redhead says, softer this time, it might even actually be genuine. “That way I don’t have to suffer the secondhand embarrassment of you sprinting around campus.”

Offended, Waverly submits anyway, giving Nicole her number and allowing the redhead to add her to the thread.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Waverly grumbles, returning to her book.

“Woah, you’re just going to ignore me now?” Nicole asks, pulling the book away from Waverly.

“Yeah kind of,” she tugs it back in her direction.

“Why?”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe it’s because I don’t like you?”

The basketball player flinches slightly, but overall isn’t deterred. “Nonsense, we’re the best of friends, obviously.” Waverly wants to reach over and smack the smug smirk off of her face. “Besides, everybody here likes me.”

“Well that cant be true, because I _don’t.”_

It’s a little abrasive, and definitely meaner than her usual style, but she _really_ needed Nicole to get the hint that she was not a fan of the daily unwelcomed antagonization and walking around campus like she was personally crowned queen.

Nicole purses her lips and nods, looking around as she takes another sip from her drink. Waverly fully returns her attention to the book she was taking notes out of and does her best to ignore the redhead who has yet to up and leave the table.

_At least she’s quiet._

A bit of guilt creeps in at the thought of hurting the girl’s feelings, but she pushes it aside; figures it’s karma for all of the irritating Nicole’s done since they’ve met. Waverly gets a few more paragraphs into her reading without incident until the girl across from her finishes her drink but keeps slurping on the straw, making the most _obnoxious_ sound she’s ever heard. She rolls her eyes, not looking up, and it stops momentarily, before resuming. Adding insult to injury, Nicole shakes around the cup, the ice rattling around inside, before slurping again, the sound going through Waverly’s head like nails on a chalkboard.

“Seriously?” She snaps, looking angrily at the redhead who abruptly stops what she’s doing. “Has anyone ever told you you’re extremely annoying?”

“Besides my brother, my parents and you? No, can’t say so.” She shrugs.

“You’re a real piece of work, Haught.” With no evidence of the redhead leaving before their next class starts, Waverly proposes a solution. “Okay, look, you can sit here at this table, and I won’t leave—”

“—Sounds like a deal to me.”

“ _But,”_ Waverly holds a finger up, signifying the condition of the deal, “we’re gonna sit in silence so I can get some homework done. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“Good,” Waverly nods, and determinedly turns back to her book for now the _third_ time. The redhead across from her returns to looking around distractedly, eyes flitting from the people passing their table to the large glass windows that make up the façade of the library (the one semi-decent looking building on campus). Bored, she starts to make a clicking sound with her tongue and drumming on the table with her fingers. Waverly does her best to ignore it; if she doesn’t she’ll be telling the redhead she’s succeeding in pissing her off.

Their “silence” lasts maybe a minute and a half before…

“You know—”

“Ughhhh,” Waverly groans, snapping her book shut.

\---

Jeremy flags her down in Res some time around 3pm, and she doesn’t even have time to grumble about her interaction with Nicole before he’s dragging her away to what he swears is a lead in their extracurriculars search (leaving her half eaten sandwich behind).

She follows him to a building she vaguely recognizes as the Arts Building, and down a set of increasingly confusing hallways and down a flight of stairs before she stops him on the landing.

“Jeremy, where the hell are we going?”

“I’m actually not sure,” he shrugs, “this guy, who I maybe kinda might be talking to, said I should come check out this thing he and his roommate do down here. He sent me the room number, but that’s it.”

“So you decided, with absolutely zero details, that the best course of action would be to bring me along to what might just be a very sketchy hookup?”

Jeremy goes red in the face for a second, before logic clicks in his mind. “Well, I—well, I’m not nearly interesting enough to have a sketchy hookup in a classroom in the Arts Building in the middle of the day.”

“What’d this guy say?” She asked, earning herself a look at the text conversation on her friend’s phone. Scanning it, she sees a familiar name. “Wait, _Robin_ , super sweet, _definitely_ gay, Christopher Robin-looking, _Robin?”_

“You know Robin?” He asks excitedly. “How do you know Robin?”

“We work the field hockey games together,” she answers. “How do you know Robin?”

“I accidentally knocked into him and he dropped all his books,” Jeremy shrugs, and Waverly detects a hint of a blush.

“Awww,” she coos, “like every high school romance movie ever.”

Feeling a little more at ease that they were meeting up with Robin, she follows Jeremy, who seems to have a better sense of direction in this building. The layout is stranger than the other buildings on campus, and Waverly finds herself distracted by massive abstract art projects, fashion design boards put up in display cases in the hallways, and the actual art gallery that takes up the entire East wing of the first floor. They go down one more flight of stairs, ending up on Floor 1B (Why they couldn’t just call it basement, she’ll never know).

Jeremy leads them down a hallway that gets progressively darker, and Waverly’s seen too many horror movies to think this can be good. The pair stop in front of a door with a red light above it, lit up and reading _ON AIR_.

_What the hell kind of operation is going on in there?_

“Robin said not to worry about the light,” Jeremy reads his text message and turns the knob to give them access.

She’s only offered a little clarification when they enter the room to see a small, not professional but definitely too nice for a college campus, studio. There’s a wall with a large plexiglass window and another door that reveals Robin sitting behind one microphone, a second one being occupied by who Waverly assumes is Robin’s roommate.

Robin’s roommate, apparently, is better known to the brunette as one Cooper Haught.

The former seems to notice Waverly and Jeremy’s presence and waves them into their booth.

“…I’ll tell you a funny story, Jett,” they walk in to hear Cooper speak, twirling his pen around.

“None of your stories are funny,” Robin deadpans.

“No, no, no seriously dude, I’m sure all my college students out there can relate when I say, I was sitting in my room—”

“—our room—”

“—the other night, just staring at my computer trying to write this paper for my English class and _I shit you not_ , I was struck with this sudden, earth-shattering need to know exactly how many miles of railroad there were in Afghanistan.”

“That’s really not funny, it actually just sounds like you’re a bad student,” Robin says and leaves a second of a pause before he adds, “How many miles of railroad are there, though?”

“Guess.”

“No just tell me.”

“I want you to guess first,” Cooper presses.

“Coop, come on you know I hate when you do this.”

“Robin, I swear to god I’ll play Nickelback over this next break if you don’t take a guess right this instant,” the redheaded boy threatens, earning an eyeroll from his partner.

“Fine. I’ll guess 150.”

“Wrong.” He refutes quickly, like he’d been waiting to hear a wrong answer. “It’s _five_ , can you believe?”

“No, I don’t, actually, just like I can’t believe it’s time to get into our next musical break,” Robin transitions.

“It’s Coop and the Jett, coming to you live from Dartmouth, Massachusetts and here’s _Rockstar.”_

Robin scowls at Cooper, removing his headset mostly playfully annoyed at the song selection. Unable to hear it, but using context clues, Waverly figures that it probably wasn’t Post Malone.

Noticing her and Jeremy still standing in the doorway, Robin invites them to take a seat at the other microphones in the room.

“What is all this?” She asks the boys who look rather comfortable in where they are.

“We kinda have our own radio show?” Robin tells her with Cooper nodding proudly beside him.

“How? Why?”

“We didn’t get much of the details, just that the school had to fill the airspace to keep the studio—which they want for whatever reason—so they put out an ad and I figured it’d look good on a resume, so…” Cooper motions to the set up in the studio, “radio show.”

“And people around here listen to you?” Jeremy asks.

“More people on campus than you’d think,” Robin answers, “and apparently we’ve got a decent following from obscure places all over North America.”

“I ain’t got no types of ideas how this show gets broadcasted out there,” Cooper says, “but the people love us.”

“So what, you come on here and talk about whatever comes to mind?”

“Yeah, pretty much, yeah.”

“You guys should join us,” Robin offers, “we’ve only got like an hour left.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I could do that,” Waverly says, not sure how she’d be able to contribute.

“Come on, it’ll be fun, we’ll help you two out.”

“Join us,” Cooper says, starting to rhythmically pound his fists on the table, chanting, “join us. Join us. _Join us. Join us.”_

Waverly ponders for a moment as Coop’s chanting speeds up, but realizes that if she’s gonna find an extracurricular to cure her boredom, she’s gotta start opening her mind to more options.

“Alright, fine,” she caves, taking the seat next to Jeremy.

Cooper and Robin run through a few basics and instruct them to put on the headphones hanging on the microphone in front of them, and Waverly hears the ending of _New Rules_ by Dua Lipa fading away under Cooper’s voice.

“Alright, alright, alright, Coop and the Jett coming back at ya after that little musical break and we’ve actually got a treat for all of you out there. Joining us in the studio, _totally_ under their own volition, two friends near and dear to our hearts, we’ve got Jeremy Chetri and Waverly Earp.”

He leaves a space for the two of them to say hi into the microphones before continuing on.

“They’re gonna be kickin’ it with us for a bit, answering some questions, just chillin’. So we’ll get this started off with a good one,” Cooper pauses, reading the paper in front of him (really just notes he scribbled onto a sheet of printer paper over the break), “Ketchup: is it a sauce or a jam? Discuss.”

“Well, anyone with half a brain would know that ketchup is a _condiment_ ,” Robin argues. “It’s just tomatoes, sugar and vinegar.”

“Yeah, actually,” Jeremy contributes, “in traditional French cooking, a ‘sauce’ refers to a kind of gravy made from butter, oil and spices. So it’s not really a sauce or a jelly.”

Robin high fives Jeremy, laughing into the microphone, glad to have someone on his side.

“Okay, fair enough, but have you considered _this?_ Tomatoes are a fruit, and jellies are made _of…”_ He looks expectantly at Waverly for her to finish the sentence.

“Fruits,” she replies, though she already knows he’s on a ridiculous side of this argument.

“Right, so technically, wouldn’t ketchup just be tomato jelly?”

“We don’t have the time to get into how wrong you are, dude,” Robin teases him.

“Okay, so it’s two for condiment, one for jelly, and none for sauce. What say you, Earp?”

“Obviously it’s a condiment, Coop,” she chuckles. “Jellies and jams have sugar, not vinegar.”

“Wow, maybe we should rethink inviting these newbies into the studio if all you’re gonna do is gang up on me,” the redheaded boy feigns being attacked. “Let’s take it to the phone lines, shall we?”

Robin looks down, presses a button and connects to a caller.

“Alright we’ve got one from all the way out in Purgatory, Canada, whaddya got for us, caller?”

Waverly grows abundantly curious at the mention of her hometown. Who the hell out there would be listening to a show over here?

 _“Hi yeah, I’m obviously team jelly,”_ the caller says, giving Waverly her answer.

“THANK YOU!” Cooper says, looking validated.

“Wynonna?” Waverly questions.

 _“Hey babygirl, you go off to college and become a radio star? Proud of you!”_ Wynonna sing-songs the last bit.

“What’re you doing listening to this show?”

 _“Your roommate told me she heard you on the radio,”_ she tells literally everybody and anybody listening, _“So obviously I had to hear it for myself.”_

“Who do we have on this line here, caller?” Robin asks.

 _“Wynonna Earp,”_ her sister answers. Waverly can see her physically restraining herself from using an expletive or two to introduce herself.

“Woahhhhh,” Cooper cheers into the microphone, “looks like we’ve got a family affair on the airwaves this afternoon.”

Wynonna stays on the line for a couple minutes longer, and mercifully (miraculously) manages not to embarrass her sister. The show itself speeds by after they take a few more callers and she and Jeremy become more engaged as they grow more comfortable conversing with Cooper and Robin. As the show concludes, the pair look at each other and appear to be having a silent discussion, nodding as they come to a conclusion.

“That was great guys, thanks for coming,” Robin says, his look lingering a bit longer on Jeremy.

“Thank you for having us,” Waverly’s response is genuine; she’s mostly happy she decided to give it a chance instead of turning her nose up at the idea.

“We were thinking,” Cooper places his headphones on the microphones stand as they get ready to leave the studio for the next show—a group of seniors discussing their engineering projects. “If you guys have the time, you should join us on the show. It’s a lot more fun than Robin just making fun of every idea I’ve ever had.”

Waverly and Jeremy looked at each other, and then back at their friends. It’s a daily commitment to the show—it’s not what she _thought_ she’d be spending her time on, but it’s something to do, and it most definitely beats banging her head against the wall and calling Wynonna every night.

**Author's Note:**

> Not me starting another idea before I even finish the first one.
> 
> I've decided that writing is the only thing that can fill the Wynonna Earp sized hole in my heart. This idea's been brewing in my head for a while now, and I just couldn't ignore it anymore. I'm still working on "Sticks and Skates" while I write this.
> 
> Will I succeed or will I fail miserably? Only time will tell :)


End file.
